ABSTRACT
The social order that arose in the Spanish colonies on the ruins of the old Indian societies, like that of Spain, was based on hierarchical principles. Black slavery in the Spanish colonies has been described as patriarchal. Mexico City and Lima were the two great centers of urban civilization in colonial Spanish America. The virtual disappearance of the native population of the Antilles and the rapid growth of sugar cane cultivation led colonists to demand black slave labor. The mestizo arose from a process of racial fusion that began in the first days of the Spanish conquest and has continued to the present. The population of the Spanish colonies formed a melting pot of races, white, red, and black. The racial anxieties expressed in the excerpt characterized Latin American societies from the beginning. Freemen and slaves formed the two great legal categories into which the Brazilian colonial population was divided.
